


heads and hearts and all the darkest parts (or: gunshots)

by eldritchbee



Series: Goretober 2020 [12]
Category: Witch's Heart (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Goretober, Goretober 2020, Guns, Murder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sirius's Route (Not Conclusion)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27198160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: That sound makes this room - Lady Dorothy’s room - feel suffocating. Instead of being his safe space from the world, he sees the blood on the floor again. For the first time in a long time, Sirius Gibson slips up, makes what he feels to be a fatal mistake. Staring down the barrel of Wilardo Adler’s gun only proves that fact.---Takes place during Sirius's Route, "Unknown Past, Dorothy's Secret" (not the conclusion but the original route), so, spoilers. Sirius does not like guns, period.For Goretober 2020 (prompt #21 - gunshots)
Relationships: Sirius Gibson & Wilardo Adler
Series: Goretober 2020 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950091
Kudos: 10





	heads and hearts and all the darkest parts (or: gunshots)

_you whisper prayers into the dark_  
_up to a god in whom you've never believed_  
_(you always do)_  
_you split the secret up six ways_  
_but it won't make it any easier to see_

_and now we don't remember_

* * *

As always, when the front door opens, Sirius runs.

He’s gotten good at this. The first few attempts he’d needed to use smoke bombs, his small legs and inexperience with the hypervigilance he’d been left with had made him sloppier. But, twelve years saw the last of the witch hunters this generation, idiots from town, dumb kids doing tests of courage, _witch researchers_ , and just plain bloodthirsty people looking to catch a glance at the _evil Witch Dorothy’s ghost_ gave him enough practice. He can hear it now even all the way up in the attic, and it lights up a fear response that has him sprinting. He can get to Lady Dorothy’s room in seconds, _quietly_ , and lock the door behind him. From there, it’s just the usual. Fake blood and fake words that Lady Dorothy spilled to keep him and the house safe from harm.

_And then that sound._

The worst sound in the entire world. A sound that riddled Dorothy with holes and left him orphaned a second time. It freezes him in space and time, and he finds himself on the floor.

And then, a knock on the door. (He doesn’t answer.

Maybe, if he’s quiet, they’ll go away.)

“Hello? Hello? Anyone there?”

“... stand back.”

There’s a click, that horrible sound of the safety’s release, and he can’t keep quiet anymore. “Stop! Stop it! Do _not_ do what you’re doing! I’m coming!”

The one with the gun hasn’t put it away by the time he opens and unlocks the door. Sirius is stuck staring. He’s scrubbed the blood from the floorboards half a million times, he’s changed the rugs, but _that sound_ makes it feel like it’s all brand new again. Fresh salt in the wound. A heaviness like a body weighing down on top of him, bleeding out. He tastes that iron on his tongue. He shivers, like back then, after that _thing_ took Lady Dorothy away and left him with a monster with a human face. Blood soaked clothes are wet, sticky, and he was one eleven year old boy left to clean up after a massacre, and no one left to trust.

(He burned the bodies left behind, buried the guns deep in the forest with a prayer that nobody would look for them.)

That sound makes this room - _Lady Dorothy’s_ room - feel suffocating. Instead of being his safe space from the world, he sees the blood on the floor again. 

For the first time in a long time, Sirius Gibson slips up, makes what he feels to be a _fatal_ mistake -

  
  
  


\- staring down the barrel of Wilardo Adler’s gun only proves that fact.

  
  
  
  


“I want you to throw that thing away.”

Wilardo is silent at first, pausing as if trying to comprehend what Sirius was saying. “Yeah, no,” he says finally, looking away. “The house is crawling with monsters at night, you really expect me not to defend myself?”

Sirius grits his teeth. “Find another way.”

“... no.”

“You understand you’re a guest in _my home_ , right!?” he’s shaking mad, the volume of his voice spiking up so that he’s actually _yelling_.

“I’m still not doing it.”

“You -” ( _twelve years ago he should have lunged forward like this, placed himself between the bullets and Lady Dorothy, shouldn’t have listened to her shouldn’t have_ hid _, the second he heard the first shot_ ) 

“What the -” Wilardo steps back just as Sirius tries to tackle him to the ground, stopped quickly by Noel wrapping his arm around Sirius’s to pull him back.

“You know!” he yells at Noel. “ _You know why_ -!”

Wilardo only stares at them.

“I do, Sirius, I do.” _(More than he could even guess.)_ “But for right now -” Ashe and Claire had entered the room, eyes wide at the scene in front of them. 

“Sirius? What’s wrong?” (Claire. Claire who _should_ know. Claire who was always so lucky to miss things Sirius couldn’t be freed from.)

Noel holds him tight. “Right now, just leave it be.”

  
  
  


\- and then, he’s staring down the barrel.

_I shouldn’t have listened to Noel, I shouldn’t have listened._ _I should have ripped it from his hands. I should have knocked him down. I should have been able to save her, twelve years ago. I should have -_

He doesn't ask Wilardo _why_. It doesn't matter, there's nothing that would soften the blow. No matter the reason, an unnecessary murder was still _despicable_. 

Instead, he thinks about all that time and effort to clean this place of tragedy, of the blood and viscera of Mayor Levine’s men, of the spots in the floor where Dorothy’s blood dripped. _All for nothing_. Now, he’s about to die on the same floor as Lady Dorothy, with bullets already embedded in his shoulder and knee. Now, it would be _him_ splattered on the wall. (And then what? What would happen to Noel and Claire, still locked in this mansion with _this man_. Just like him, back then.) “You. Are just like them. Just like _him_.”

“Dunno who you’re talking about.” Wilardo sighs, “But, I don’t like doing this.” The words are enough to make him sick. “It’s nothing personal, Sirius.”

“ _Like that makes it better_ ,” he spits. “ _P_ _eople like you_ disgust _me_. Is this you _defending_ yourself?”

“... no, it’s not.”

(he doesn’t hear the next bit, there’s _that sound_ and then there’s _darkness_ and then there’s _hell_ and then there’s -)

“Yeah, I disgust me too.”

(- and then there’s Claire -)

**Author's Note:**

> All my Goretobers are just depressing instead of gorey but SHRUG.
> 
> Title and top lyrics are "Bullets" by Tunng.


End file.
